


woman v. man

by TobermorianSass



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Masturbation, Partners in Crime, Pining, Revenge, Treat, Vaginal Fingering, erotic space phone sex of a sort, gift giving as seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:44:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: Maratelle survives Arkanis. It's what follows that's tough, but sometimes with a little help for the long con and sweet revenge, things aren't too bad.





	woman v. man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callmelyss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/gifts).



> Hi callmelyss, I loved your letter about the Hux moms and felt immediately drawn to write this. I've thrown in a little bit of all the prompts you gave into this, particularly the bit about them being partners in crime and teaming up to survive (or murder) Brendol Hux. I had great fun writing this treat and I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Big thanks to H for the super quick beta read.

The spray catches her portside, running down the exposed skin of her cheek and her neck, drenching her clothes. Like everything about Arkanis, it’s cold, miserable and dreary and she has nowhere else to go. Ahead, the sea opens up, a great cavernous maw, and she resigns herself to the inevitable wash of the waves as she stumbles across the slippery durasteel deck towards the entrance to the deck down below.

Maratelle clutches the pearls closer, wrapping her fingers tight around them as though the sea could pluck it out of her hands. The sea could. From the sea, to the sea: Arkanis’ funeral rites and stars knew she’d heard them droned too many times in those early years. Enough, that in her dreams, the sea was no longer the lifeless water of Imperial science, but a hungry monster searching, devouring, drowning — insatiable.

Another rotten promise. _Her_. The string of knick knacks strewn across the mantelpiece in her room: a sea-killer ivory carving of a ship, jogan fruit lotion, real ambergris, a sapphire bracelet that sat miraculously, perfectly, across the slender bones of her wrist.

Stars knew why she came here in the first place. Better a damp port-world than a dead little rock that sold rye to Arkanis in the off-season. For years they talked about her. Poor little rim-girl, tossed over for a kitchen girl. She laughed about it sometimes, alone in the cottage they gave her after everything; glass of milk trembling in her hands. All eyes on Brendol, as usual, so none of them looked at her and saw her looking: the demure shirt, trousers and boots, her hair piled up on her head, her long neck. Her breasts, high and full, under her shirt.

The ghost touch of her fingers, along the back of her neck as she fastened the pearls.

Stars. There’s nothing good that could come of this.

* * *

But she’s waiting by the cottage — and Maratelle nearly throws her head back and laughs: the heavy serpent-hunter roll-neck pullover, the louche slouch and the cap pulled heavy over the dark curls, but barely concealing them. Almost a teenage boy, but not quite. No, not quite.

“I have a plan,” she says, barring Maratelle from opening the door.

“I don’t care.”

“You want revenge, don’t you?” she says. Then, softer, leaning closer: “You deserve revenge, don’t you? Stuck here, all alone on this starforsaken rock.”

She takes one of Maratelle’s hands in hers, still leaning casually against the lintels, and runs her thumb over the sea-toughened skin: “Takes a lot of nerve to throw a person away like an old datapad. Like so much garbage.”

Maratelle tries to push past, but a hand on her waist and _her_ pressed up against her forces her to stop.

“You miss the Bureau,” she says. “You drink every night and shrug yourself into the jacket when you’re three drinks in, imagining you’re back when Project Unity was still running.”

Maratelle snarls at her, fingers twitching with the need to scratch her perfect, symmetrical face and ruin it with the asymmetrical scars.

“I need your help,” she says. “There’s a source who won’t crack.”

Her breath ghosts against the shell of Maratelle’s ear: “You’re good at cracking them, aren’t you?”

* * *

She likes the way Brendol’s eyes widen as though he’s seen a ghost, when she steps on to the ramp, behind the prisoner — half-dead, broken and confessional. She likes the terror. The idea of her, stepping out of her grave to do what she does best. Men like him — they never expect their crimes to come back and haunt them.

“Did you miss me?” she says sweetly.

* * *

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t _know_. Maratelle locks herself in the ‘fresher and unscrews the top of her flask feverishly to take a swig. On Arkanis, her eyes had began sinking into her face, while her cheeks grew thinner and whiter, turning her into a living ghost. There’s colour in her cheeks now and her hair is no longer brittle with sea salt, water and the cold. She can smell the ambergris, soft and musky, when she dabs it on her neck now. No jewellery: the uniform code prevents it, but sometimes she slips the pearl necklace on underneath her clothes, cool against her skin and between her breasts.

She sets the flask down on the basin and unfastens her jacket, unfastens her shirt, slips her fingers under the gore and unfastens the clasp. The cold suddenly settles in her fingers. Maratelle pushes it away, imagining C — her fingers trailing against her skin as she opens her bra. She’d touch the pearls and grin that twisted half-smirk, letting the pearls slide through her fingers, brushing innocently, chastely against the inside of Maratelle’s breast.

Maratelle lets the pearls fall back against her skin and holds her breath. Slowly, she traces the outside of her right areola, watching her nipple harden. Would she? _Yes_ , Maratelle thinks. No, she’d take the nipple between her thumb and forefinger, rub it, press it, _twist_ —

C — she’s playing the long game. The long con. Revenge, served at absolute zero, after Brendol’s stewed long and hard enough in the terror of her shadow, in her footsteps dogging him around the place, the proof of her existence, in the screams from the prison block where she does what she does best which is _pain_.

There’s the sound of movement outside and immediately after: “Maratelle.”

She releases herself in fright, staring at her reflection: breasts exposed and nipples taut little nubs, pearls hanging between them and her chest rising and falling rapidly. Bad timing, always with the bad timing. Maratelle hastily fastens her bra and starts fastening her clothes.

“ _Maratelle_.” Brendol swears.

He can’t know about the whiskey. She hastily prises the lid of the lavatory flush system open and stashes it in there. She’ll have to move it later. Brendol — Brendol’s fool enough to not notice, but she’s certain the brat knows. He’s always watching, alert as a bloody loth-rat.

Maratelle flushes and opens the door.

“Here,” she says. “I’m right here.”

* * *

It’s all silence. No _her_ , waiting slouched in the dark, in dark wool roll-neck pullovers or putting her hand on Maratelle’s waist. The seduction period is over. It’s always this way: the whirlwind of first, wild promises and then the long nothing, the empty, hollow nothing. The silences. The long, dead silences. Fucking nothing and Brendol, still Brendol, though his hair is thinning and he watches her with the eyes of a hunted cantalope who’s scented the hunter hidden in the long grasses, but can’t spot the danger yet.

He’ll get his. Soon, he’ll have the cuffs around his hands and she’ll turn up the dials while he struggles and she sing-songs: _poor little Brendol, thought you could get away_. One warm hand on her hip, breath ghosting along her neck and _her_ laughing huskily. Back, again, with all the selfish promises that go nowhere, crooning in her ear: _I told you I could, didn’t I_?

One warm, phantom, absent hand, still lining up presents along her desk, for her.

* * *

He still doesn’t know.

* * *

Five years later, her comlink chimes in the middle of the night. Brendol remains unmoving, next to her, though it echoes loud and sharp. Maratelle stares at the little antiquated cathode ray screen, printed with _UNKNOWN_ in dotted Aurabesh. She answers it, waits silently.

She knows the rise and fall of breath. _Her_ , fastening the pearls, her breath drifting warm and humid along her neck. Long in, short, almost silent out. In, out.

“It’s now,” she says. “Maratelle.”

She shivers at the way the syllables roll off C — _her_ tongue — and presses her thighs together.

“Maratelle.”

“I’m here,” she breathes.

The sound of breathing fills the static. Maratelle shivers again and drags her fingers slowly down her ribs, along the synthsilk of her nightdress.

“Maratelle,” she says eventually. “Maratelle.”

It's always too hot in the room. Brendol likes it this way; his private luxury. Her hand is sticky, slick with sweat as she pulls the fabric up and slides her hand between her thighs.

She slips her fingers between her folds and rubs in time to C — her breathing, heavy and harsh, splintered and refracted through the million 0s and 1s that turn real, living things into dead electronics.

“Maratelle.” Uncertain and on the brink of one of those atrocious late night confessions, though it could be bright daylight wherever the pfassk she is.

“You made it out,” Maratelle says.

“Maratelle -”

An unfinished sentence, the _l_ breathed as though her mouth is pressed against Maratelle’s ear, but softer than the whispers of bloody revenge — as though —

Maratelle turns on her side, angles herself and slides a finger into her cunt.

She says it, soft, deliberate, breathy: “Maratelle.”

She sent rubies, two days ago. Slender, set in gold, an ancient, outdated quartz crystal chrono that in the empty silence of a Destroyer with its engine cut for repairs, ticks with terrifying, regular precision.

 _Maratelle_.

She swallows a moan, thrusting her hips slightly at _her_ , saying her name. Maratelle squeezes her clit. A choked cry nearly escapes her throat.

I wore your pearls, she wants to say. I wear them everyday, inside, and drink whiskey alone in ‘freshers so I can pretend I’m Brendol, that it’s him and his whiskey-aftershave rancid smell because I don’t trust myself to slip further if I don’t tell myself it’s for verisimilitude, so I’m the one you see, the one you decide to fuck and the one you betray, instead of the one you stare at sideways, the one who asks me what I fucking want while fingering the badge on my chest you little pfassking bitch.

“I did,” she says. “I did.”

Maratelle cries sharp, half-strangled in the dead silence of their room, as she comes.

“Liar,” she whispers and snaps the commlink off.

* * *

The beads of sweat mushrooming, diseased fear spreading along his forehead, almost makes it worth it.

* * *

C — _she_ turns heads when she arrives, sweeping down the curve of the stairs in black silk draped across the angles of her hips and shoulders, across her breasts, where it sinks low, temptingly low. Brendol’s fingers dig hard into her arm; Brendol’s a blind fool and always has been, always missing what’s right underneath his nose like how the kitchen girl he fucked was a snitch in the making. Snitches went a long way in the Empire. He should have known that, marrying one like he did.

There’s a crash. The glass crystal of his two-fingers of whiskey shatters at her feet, sheen of sweat on his forehead glistening horribly in the bright halogen lights.

“Brendol Hux,” she purrs. “I’ve heard _so_ much about you.”

* * *

Maratelle finds her slouched and smoking a cigarra by the greenhouse as promised. In the dim glow of the cigarra, darkness pools in the hollows of her collarbones and Maratelle finds herself resisting the impulse to reach out and trace them with one gloved hand.

This time, she lets Maratelle through into the greenhouse without a word, silently leading the way through the plants: ferns, potted flowers, a couple of creepers. Exotic hothouse flowers, dancing gently in their petals, like _her_ , sleek and exposed in her backless dress whose folds dip suggestively every time she moves.

“It’s done,” she tells Maratelle.

“I didn’t know you knew Armitage,” Maratelle says.

She shrugs. “He’s my son.”

She’d like to take C — _her_ cigarra and fling it on the floor, shake the answers out of her. The how and the where and the why, why the pfassk she wasn’t enough to handle this job.

“He’s a little bitch,” Maratelle says, instead.

 _She_ grins, smirk twisting her mouth lopsidedly upwards. “What you said -”

“Aren’t you?” Maratelle asks her. “All those promises, all those lies. _You deserve revenge, Maratelle. You deserve better_.”

“You remember what I asked you?” _she_ says. “The first time we met.”

First and last, before the fall. _What do you want_. She’d said: _same thing all of us do_. Big E, small e. Empire. empire.

Maratelle takes a step closer. The toe of her boot, touching C — her pointed sandal. She plucks the cigarra from her mouth and crushes it underfoot.

“Wouldn’t want to ruin that pretty voice,” she says. “Or you won’t have anywhere else to climb.”

Her laugh, half-a-laugh, exhaled, stirs her hair, tickling her ear. They’ll be finding Brendol now, or rather they’ll find Armitage, staggering out of the conservatory spattered in blood. They’ll want to know how and why. _He’ll be ours_ : _her_ , breathing over the comlink. Another mad, mad risk but kriff knows she’s a fool sometimes. Everyone’s a fool sometimes, everyone’s a fool over their hungers, desires, the little driving dynamos that keep the body going.

C — she puts a hand on Maratelle’s neck and presses her mouth to hers, tentative and soft.

A fool’s bargain, but Armitage’s always been a fool where he smells power.

Maratelle tilts her head and deepens the kiss, sliding her tongue into her mouth. She threads her fingers through her carefully coiffed hair till she finds the comb. Diamonds. If she was a cliche, she’d ask why she hadn’t given her diamonds yet. _Am I not your first and only_.

“Three husbands,” Maratelle says, when she pulls back. “I kept count.”

“I’m a fast climber.”

Maratelle yanks the comb and drops it. Her hair tumbles down her neck in long, thick dark waves.

“So I noticed.”

She kisses her, rough and demanding. C — she twists Maratelle’s straw curls around her finger. Maratelle yelps into the kiss at the sharp sting when she tugs. She breaks the kiss and hooks a still-gloved finger under the slender strap holding C — _her_ dress up on her shoulders. Maratelle pulls it off; not as ungently as the way she puts her hand on her exposed breast and squeezes till she moans.

“Are you happy?” Maratelle asks her.

“What kind of kriffing question,” she breathes.

Maratelle shoves the other strap off her shoulder and on impulse, pinches her nipple. She cries and pulls Maratelle back in for a kiss. Her hands tremble — barely, almost unnoticeable, like the wispy feather-leaves of the jujon tree heralding the arrival of Arkanis’ storm season. Doesn’t stop her reaching for Maratelle’s collar and trying her luck.

Maratelle grabs her wrist, her pulse fluttering wildly — she can feel it even through the thick nerf-leather of her First Order issue gloves.

“No,” she tells her.

She turns her, sharply. The moonlight slants across her exposed breasts and heat surges in Maratelle’s cunt. She finds the high slit of C — _her_ dress — predictable: backless, slit up the right leg, high enough to tease the synthsilk stocking top underneath, straight out of a pulpy holofilm — and slides her hand under the fabric.

“Gently,” she says. “You wouldn’t want to tear it.”

 _No_ , Maratelle thinks. What she wants is to take her upstairs and push her down on one of those beds. Satin sheets, feather pillows, thick mattresses you can sink into. The kind of luxury you get in a house like this. Take her upstairs, push her down and undress her till she’s only got her stockings on, then fuck her with her fingers till she tells her -

“Kriff,” she moans, as Maratelle sticks two fingers into her panties and presses her clit. “M -”

Maratelle pushes her up against the glass and braces herself, shoulder pressing C — _her_ bare skin against the cool glass so Maratelle can caress her breast and squeeze as she slides her hand lower and teases her.

Condensation mists the glass. “Maratelle.”

She can feel herself growing wet. If there was a bed — if they had longer — if, if, if: she could put _her_ on her knees and push her pretty mouth down between her thighs, while Maratelle twisted her dark hair around in her hands.

Maratelle nudges her hair aside and bites her shoulder, pushing her panties down. She slides a finger roughly into her.

She gasps and Maratelle feels her hand, groping roughly along the thick fabric of her trousers. Maratelle presses closer, till her hand moves and cups her crotch. She has to hold her breath to keep herself from whispering her name, even though the purchase is nowhere near enough.

“Your gloves,” _she_ says, hoarsely.

Maratelle removes her hand. The gloves are wet, sticky with _her_. There’s no cure for a sullied leather glove. No washing to take the stains away, erase its history: where it’s been, what it’s done, the crimes, the graces it’s committed. She presses her fingers to C — her mouth and watches in the glass as she nibbles at her index finger before licking it, long and lascivious, as though a thorough cleaning could turn this into make-believe.

But then she sees her eyes, dim and blurred in the glass, and the way they’re heavy-lidded and hungry and the way the smile curves her lips.

She tugs with her teeth and Maratelle’s glove comes off.

“You’re not scared, are you?” she asks Maratelle.

Maratelle pinches her nipple with her now bare hand, eliciting a long, low moan from her in response.

“Next hand,” she demands.

Maratelle watches her silhouette: the dim outline of her straight, small nose, her lips — a little too large for her pointed face — moving as she teases Maratelle’s fingers with the tip of her tongue. Her skin is smooth and soft under Maratelle’s free hand. When you climb up far enough, it’s possible to undo the ravages of hard work. Jogan fruit lotion, Rbollean petal oil, Moltokian Camba-Fruit body gel. Maratelle pinches her waist, just to hear her moan around her fingers. The sensation sends a thrill right through Maratelle, that drives her to slide her hand ruthlessly under C — her dress and shove a finger into her cunt.

Her second glove joins the other one on the floor. Maratelle runs her fingers roughly over her lips — skin, smooth and waxy with lip-smear — before sliding her hand down, along her throat.

She slides another finger into her, savoring the way her throat vibrates under her hand. Maratelle thrusts roughly now, in time to C — her breath, the expanding patch of condensation on the glass. They’re short and sharp, punctuated by little pathetic whines that settle hot and heavy in the pit of Maratelle’s stomach, with no fucking respite except to release her throat and squeeze her breast and press rough, open mouthed kisses to her shoulder.

She comes with a loud, wordless cry as Maratelle jerks her head back roughly with her hair and kisses her, sliding her tongue roughly into her mouth.

C — her body is trembling, constant like the fields of burmillet back home on -

“Maratelle,” she whispers, turning. “You -”

The thought: _her,_ sticking her fingers up Maratelle’s cunt and looking her in the eye, pressing her against the window and roughly unbutton her jacket to touch the pearls underneath and grin that half-twisted smile, knowing she’s been wearing it these past six years, dreaming of revenge and everything else. _Her_ , turning and seeing her instead of Brendol.

She pushes her away and runs a hand through her hair out of habit more than anything. She’s immaculate. It’s _her,_ half-naked and with a bruise forming on her shoulder where the strap of her dress used to rest and her hair cascading down her back and the dark red of her lip-smear smudged and indistinct. She's the one who ought to be straightening herself out, but she isn't. Not even to pull her dress back up.

“They’ll start looking for us,” Maratelle says.

 _She_ reaches over and touches Maratelle’s hair.

“Leaf,” she explains. “I was always ISB.”

Maratelle crouches to pick up her gloves, hoping the darkness conceals her face.

“I knew that,” she says, unsteadily.

She laughs, soundlessly. “No you didn’t. I was _sent_. They wanted a snitch on the inside. A non-partisan observer on the ground.”

“Was that the Governor?” She straightens and starts pulling her gloves on, still refusing to meet her eyes. “Who said that, I mean.”

“Does it matter?”

Maratelle shrugs.

She steps closer and caresses Maratelle’s cheek. Her hand is smooth and soft and Maratelle thinks, wildly, of all the lotions, all the milks she must have soaked her hands in to hide the kitchen wear, all to ignore the way C — her touch sets her heart thudding in her chest.

 _She_ crooks a finger under her chin and Maratelle finds herself forced to look her in the eye.

“I never told,” she says.

“We bargained.”

“And I keep my promises.” She brushes Maratelle's lip gently with her thumb. “The ones I mean.”

“Sure,” Maratelle replies. “Everyone does. It's finding which ones are meant that's the trouble.”

Her mouth is gentle, so kriffing gentle and dangerous. Oh she's heard all the Bureau stories about the Caskan wolf-snake of Naboo, the girl who took men back home only when she’d marked them down for the kill. Men in uniform like wild stories about girls who don’t play by their rules. Hells, not just men in uniform. Men, broadly speaking, as a collective, are a dim-witted, uncreative and unimaginative group full of lurid stories about women ready to kill them. Fear is the greatest revelator of weakness. It’s only a matter of working backwards logically, one step at at time. Every man’s weakness is his belief he’s the centre of the damn galaxy. Case kriffing closed.

But _her_ — up close, she smells all tangled up with the flowers all around them, wild and exotic and heady, like the high sea winds before a storm. Maratelle lets her eyes close and savours the sensation: her mouth, warm and gentle, the smell of her shampoo and her perfume, the smooth skin on her arms.

Her fingers find the satin strap and she slowly pulls the strap back up the length of _her_ arm.

Maratelle makes a horrible, needy little noise in the back of her throat when she finally pulls away.

“Come with me,” she says, holding her hand out to Maratelle.

* * *

It takes one elegant twist of her wrist to fix her back into place. Maratelle memorizes the movement, fascinated by the rise and fall of her hands, how carelessly and effortlessly she does it in the dark, no mirrors except the glass where she watches Maratelle watch her and smiles.

Just for her.

* * *

The shawl she pulls around Maratelle’s bared shoulders is black chaughaine for camouflage. Silky soft and far too warm for this weather — and the familiar faint smell of ambergris.

The same ambergris in a cut glass bottle hidden in her desk aboard the _Finalizer_.

* * *

She doesn’t mention the pearls. But her hand lingers, half a second too long, fingering them where they disappear inside her dark undershirt and when she looks up, her eyes are dark and wide.

* * *

The woods are deathly still and dark enough that Maratelle’s ship-spoiled eyes can barely make out C — her bare back in front of her. She’s never been one for trees, always found them spooky. They had none back home and Arkanis, except for the sea, the damp and the endless moss, wasn’t much for trees or woods or forests. These trees lean all close together, leaves intermingling chaotically, leaving random chunks empty where she can make out the bare sky and the occasional star, and sometimes so densely closed she can’t see a kriffing thing.

They come to a stop deep in. There’s a stream somewhere close, suddenly loud as it clatters over rocks as it winds its way to some forgotten river or pond, now that no one’s moving.

There’s a rustling sound and then Armitage emerges from between a couple of bushes tangled up in each other. _Clean_ , she notes, surprised.

“Mother,” he says, stooping to dutifully kiss C — her on both her cheeks. “Maratelle.”

He knows better than to try and kriffing kiss her.

“He’s —” he says, looking down, deeper into the dark.

“Awake?” _she_ asks him.

He nods, curtly.

“You know what happens now,” she tells him. He nods, slowly and she smiles. “Go.”

She turns to Maratelle with a flick of her dress. Next thing she knows, she’s holding a blaster out to her.

“I meant it,” she tells Maratelle. “I always have.”

Maratelle takes the blaster from her. Imperial era Blastech, she notes with satisfaction. Of course: there must be millions unidentified, unaccounted for Imperial era blasters floating around the galaxy.

She flicks the safety catch off and turns, only to find _her_ hand clutching at her elbow.

“Wait.” She twists the ring on her right hand off. Diamonds, Maratelle realizes, as they catch and refract a momentary fragment of starlight.

Maratelle inhales sharply as she takes her hand, holds her breath as she slips the ring on her finger.

“Three marriages—it’s a good run,” she says. “You know what they say.”

“Quit while you’re ahead.”

“They say Canto Bight’s nice this time of the year,” she says. “If you have money to blow, a yacht and a pair of killer minds. I think we qualify, don’t you?”

Maratelle slips off her old promise ring and drops it into the dried leaves and grass with a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Title pulled from Pulp's I Spy, which inspired a fair bit of this fic.


End file.
